The prior art is already aware of fish line jigglers where the fishing rod is moved up and down to move the fishing bait in the water and thereby attract the fish to the bait. Various powered devices have been employed for that purpose, and they are particularly useful where the fisherman is fishing through the ice or has more than one fish pole and line in use or where he simply does not want to constantly hold the pole or constantly jiggle the pole manually. Examples of such prior art are seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,758,407 and 3,001,317 and 3,031,790. In those instances, the devices for holding the rod are powered devices or mechanisms which induce a movement to the rod for the purpose of moving the bait in the water to attract the fish. However, those prior art devices are not programmable for the purpose of permitting the fisherman to change the action of moving the rod and fishing line, at least not in a expedient and simple manner.
Still further, another example of a prior art unit as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,600,837, in this instance, a rotatable ratchet wheel is in contact with a specially provided finger which engages the ratchet to induce the jiggling or up and down movement of the fishing rod. However, in that instance, the fisherman cannot readily and easily alter the jiggling action but he can only select between two ratchet wheels which are arranged with uniformly spaced teeth thereon and thus can only produce a repetitious up and down rod movement of a repeated frequency and cannot produce a varying frequency or up and down rod movement as in the present invention. Further, the fishing rod of U.S. Pat. No. 3,600,837 must be specially arranged so that it has a ratchet finger affixed thereto for engaging the ratchet wheel to induce even that movement of non-varying or continuous frequency, as mentioned.
The present invention provides a programmable fish line jiggler which permits the fisherman to readily and easily change the apparatus to provide for a different pattern of movement or jiggling of the fishing line, according to the whims or effectiveness determined by the fisherman. In accomplishing this object, the apparatus of this invention is provided with movable contacts on a rotating wheel and the contacts can be readily and easily positioned in selected positions both radially and circumferentially on the wheel or rotating member, all so that the fishing rod in contact with the wheel will be moved up and down in response to the selected positioning of the contacts.
Another object and advantage of this invention is to provide a programmable fish line jiggler which has an additional feature or dimension for jiggling, namely, the rod itself can be formed with a non-linear portion which will permit the rod to be moved up and down in accordance with the configuration of the rod in that non-linear portion which is in contact with the rotatable member inducing the jiggling action.
Thus, in the present invention, a programmable fish line jiggler is provided whereby the fisherman can readily and easily change the program for jiggling the rod and thus the fishing line in accordance with his immediate desires while fishing, and only one rotatable member is required and positioning contacts on that member will accomplish the objective mentioned. Further, a conventional type of fishing rod can be employed and still the accomplishment of an effective and readily accomplished alteration of the apparatus is possible while using a standard type of fishing rod. Further, the apparatus of this invention lends itself to accommodating a specially arranged type of fishing rod which has a non-linear portion and thus provides for additional up and down movement of the rod. In summary, the apparatus of this invention is not complex nor expensive, and it is easy to use and to alter for virtually unlimited numbers of patterns of jiggling. Further, with the apparatus of this invention, the rod can move up and down in an irregular pattern of movement, rather than simple repetitious up and down movement, such as that shown by U.S. Pat. No. 3,600,837, and thus the fisherman can simulate the desired manual movement of a rod while fishing but he need not actually be inducing that movement by holding the rod himself.
Other objects and advantages will become apparent upon reading the following description in light of the accompanying drawings.